On Medium: Beyond the Consumer's Dream of Ultimate Knowledge

Here's an article that explains why the human pursuit of knowledge is likely endless because knowledge isn't a neatly packaged product but an expression of our open-ended minds and cultures.

See, for some context, one of my earlier explorations of this problem, "Reason, Attitude, and Ultimate Reality."

On Medium: Being Happy is the Meaning of Life — for Adult Babies

Read on about how Albert Brooks’ use of positive psychology to explain life's meaning amounts to a conservative excuse for capitalism’s takeover of philosophy.

My New Paperback Anthology is Out!

Behold, my new paperback anthology is out now on Amazon! It's called Religion's Travesty of God. 

This was originally meant to be my ultimate volume on religion, the comprehensive new atheist book I would have liked to see on the market. Half would be devoted to religion, and the other half to problems with atheism and secular society. But the book became too long so I divided it in two. 

This volume tackles religion, it's still over 500 pages, and it's the one that presented me with some Kafkaesque obstacles behind the scenes, which I wrote about here. The next volume, which I'm currently working on, will take on atheism and secular society. Both draw mainly from my Medium articles. 

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And here, by way of odd celebration, is one of my bookshelves. See if you can spot some books on it that might have influenced my writings over the years.

On Medium: Is Atheism Progressive?

Read on to explore the social consequences of godlessness, and whether atheism is for the best, as new atheists like to spin the matter and to sell their message.

Is Having Children Always Wrong?

There have perhaps always been misanthropic curmudgeons. But their unremitting pessimism has metastasized on the intellectual dark web, as they’ve availed themselves of the social media tools that are notorious for creating feedback loops that can nurture even the most outlandish of poisonous discourses.

David Benatar is perhaps the most prominent antinatalist, for example, believing that procreation is immoral since it causes untold harms in opening the next generation to the inevitable hardships in life. And Benatar debated Jordan Peterson on the matter.

Gary “Inmendham,” whom I debated onYouTube in 2014, has for years hammered away at conventional society for rejecting antinatalism and misanthropy. And a blogger who writes under the name “Existential Goof” follows much of Inmendham’s framing of the issues.

A Case for Antinatalism

Here’s the start of Existential Goof’s case for antinatalism, that is, for the ending of human procreation and thus for the indirect suicide of our species:

my thesis is that if one accepts an atheistic and materialistic conception of reality, then there can be no such thing as a good or a bad that is not defined exclusively by the feelings of sentient organisms. There is no basis for having a preference between two different outcomes outside on the impact that those outcomes are going to have on the feelings of yourself, or other sentient organisms. The gulf which exists between pleasure and pain is what drives preference; and if not guided by this, then all choices would be as arbitrary as the result of a meaningless coin toss.

He says also that nature punishes those who have no kids. Thus, he says, “Only when we allow ourselves to outsmart the unintelligent forces of natural selection will humanity realise that the only rational course for us to pursue is that of the extinction of ourselves, and of all life. We can then realise that, in a game in which nobody can win, the best option left to us is to cut our collective losses.”

On Medium: Religious Faith: A Free Pass In A Trivial Game

Here's an article about the dubious role of religious faith in the transition from animistic magic, through polytheism, to monotheistic alienation and secularism.

On Medium: The Puzzle of Why Zulie Rane Blocked Me for Criticizing Her Sales Advice

Read on for the follow-up to my criticism of Zulie Rane's advice on how to succeed as a freelance writer. This time I draw some lessons about the creator economy from Zulie Rane's decision to "block" me on Medium for levelling that criticism.

On Medium: Are Atheists Overconfident in Reason?

Here's an article about how reason historically undermined itself and turned new atheism into a futile sales job.

On Medium: Facets of Childishness in Ancient and Modern Societies

Read on about the quest to find the adults in the room despite the myriad ways most of us neglect to fulfill our potential or to use our freedoms wisely.

On Medium: Is Nature Too Divinely Self-Creative to Need an Intelligent Designer?

Here's an article on how science points away from inferior religions towards a better one. The article replies to a critic of my earlier examination of the design argument for theism.

On Medium: How Zulie Rane Whitewashes the Selling of Stories

Here's an article about why your writing may be too good to be sold.

On Medium: Atheism and the Burden of Refuting the Preposterous

Read on about how farcical debates spring up from atheistic statements of the obvious, and how the atheist is in the position of the boy who cries out that the emperor's wearing no clothes.